


Iron and Mind

by OtherCat



Series: Up the Revolution [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, AncestorSue, Other, Vriska's badfic, nonSgrub AU, pick a quadrant any quadrant, run-on purple sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamzee decides to help Aradia get revenge against Vriska.  It will be a contest of ghosts and chucklevoodoo versus manipul8ion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gamzee (poison in my bloodstream)

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by VastDerp and RainbowBarnacle

The story Karkat tells you after he turns up on your doorstep looking like an ancient wayfarer wanting to lay his shit down to a guest at a celebration, goes something like this: Terezi went after Vriska for what she did to Tavros, but Vriska got the drop on Terezi and left her out in the middle of nowhere with no shelter or a way to get help. Terezi is burned real bad, and if she doesn’t die, will lose her sight. The only reason Terezi is alive right now is because Sollux woke up hearing her voice and called up Karkat, telling him to go get her. Now Aradia was going to go after Vriska next and Karkat was afraid for Terezi, worried about Aradia, and pissed at Vriska.

“Terezi’s going to be blind?” You want to make sure you understand the situation. Karkat talks fast and loud and goes flying off into some truly bitching metaphors and then gets lost, hung up and dangling from a thousand foot high word wall. It’s usually pretty damn funny, hearing Karkat go off, and sometimes, you can’t help but set him off, but this time it’s not funny at all.

 “If she even survives,” Karkat says. He’s settled down enough that he can sit down instead of stomping back and forth, so he does. “She’s burned really bad.”

You nod, but something doesn’t fit yet, and it’s bothering you. You know exactly what Vriska has to do to feed her lusus. You know it from Terezi and from Tav. Some part of your head is saying that something like that is important, that it’s _important_ that Terezi is alive, suffering from fucking massive sunburns instead of fed to Vriska’s lusus. You don’t know why yet though, so you pat your best friend on the shoulder. “She’ll pull through,” you say.  

“If she does, I’ll believe in miracles,” Karkat mutters, and leans against you. You give him a hug but he doesn’t let you do it for very long. He squirms loose as if he’s boneless and glares at you. You smile at him, and he makes a disgusted noise. “Fuck, Gamzee, when was the last time you washed your clothes? Or yourself? Or eaten something besides those fucking pies?” He gets up and starts tugging on you. You follow along, letting him pull you into the ablution block more to give him something to do than any other reason.

You keep thinking about it when he finally leaves, still nagging at you about bathing and eating. (He even cooked a couple extra meals and stuck them in the thermal hull for you. Your best friend is probably the sweetest, palest motherfucker you know, except maybe for Tavros who is quickly becoming one of your favorite bros.) You smile and nod and he goes flailing off for his home, complaining that you don’t listen to him anyway. This isn’t true; you do listen, you just don’t bother to actually do what he says when you don’t fucking feel like it. (You might also be a little scared that if you do try harder to take care of yourself, he might stop coming around because he’ll think you don’t need him.)   

You sit down, and think about it for a while. There’s a familiar ache right between the eyes that’s telling you that you probably need to eat another sopor pie, but you leave it be for now, even if you’ll regret it later. When you forget your pie, you end up seeing things people don’t want you to see, like the ids of your neighbors. They get all pissed when you stumble around in their thinkpans and see all the things they want to keep hid, and it’s too much trouble to deal with that kind of shit even if making them afraid of kelp or hoofbeast shoe crabs or something is pretty damn funny sometimes.

You think about the situation and why it’s bothering you, and after a while, you realize you have a hard time understanding why someone would want to do the kind of shit Vriska is doing. You understand doing something when you’re too mad to think, and then waking up cold and sick sometimes, with blood in your mouth. That kind of thing is easy to understand, because that’s what happens when you don’t have your pies, or when you fall asleep outside your recuperacoon. It’s been something you been trying not to let happen since you were three fucking sweeps old.

Actually planning something out, actually setting something up to happen is something else again. It’s not something you’d ever do or really know how to. You try so hard not to fuck anyone up, and there Vriska is walking people off cliffs. You try so _damn_ hard to keep people from being afraid of you, and Vriska’s terrorizing a boy who _actually jokes around with you_ once you get him to relax.

It makes you angry, but it also makes you a little curious.  

 You eventually decide you need to contact Aradia.

 **[terminallyCapricious is trolling apocalypseArisen]**

TC: WhAt ArE yOu GoInG tO dO aBoUt sErKeT, mY fINe PsYcHoPoMpInG ChICa? My BrO kArKaT iS aLl Up aNd WoRrIeD aBoUt WhAt MiGhT gO dOwN.

AA: what I should have done from the beginning

AA: highblood

AA: i hope karkat did not ask you to talk me out of this.

TC: hElL nO cHiCa Im nOt GoNnA gO aLl “oBeY mE lOwBloOd” oN yOuR fInE aSs. I dOn’T pLaY tHaT sHiT.

TC: cHiCa, I’m HuRt YoU’d bE tHiNkInG I’m LiKe ThAt. :o(

TC: i’M jUsT wAnTiNg To KnOw WhAt YoU’rE gOnNa Do?

AA: I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done to tavros and terezi

AA: and everyone else she’s killed or hurt

AA: she can make amends to her victims

TC: iS tHaT gOnNa WoRk? FrOm WhAt I hEaR, sErKeT dOn’T LiSteN tO nObOdY sHe DoN’t WaNt To.

TC: BuT, iF yOuR gOnNa HaVe HeR aSs HaUnTeD, I ThInK I cAn mAkE tHe LeSsOn StIcK.

AA: how

 **[terminallyCapricious is idle!]**

 **[apocalypseArisin is disconnected!]**

 **[apocalypseArisin is online!]**

 **[apocalypseArisin is trolling terminallyCapricious]**

AA: that was horrible O_o

AA: I couldn’t breathe and my bloodpusher felt like it was going to burst out of my chest.

TC: I cAn MaKe HeR tOo FuCkInG sCaReD ToO tHiNk. ShE wOn’T bE aBlE tO gEt YoU bAcK fOr ThE gHoStS.

AA: can I ask why you’re offering to help with this

 **[terminallyCapricious is typing.]**

 **[terminallyCapricious is typing.]**

 **[terminallyCapricious has been idle for fifteen minutes!]**

TC:  SuRe, BuT I DoN’t KnOw If I gOt A gOoD aNsWeR.

AA: O_O okay.  Why are you helping?

TC: :o) i’M jUsT dOiNg WhAt FeElS rIgHt ChICa. SeNd Me dIrEcTiOnS tO hEr HiVe, AnD jUsT dO yOuR pSyChOpOmP tHiNg.

 **[terminallyCapricious is no longer trolling apocalypseArisin]**

Your head is really starting to kill you, so you have some pie, but not as much as you usually would. Your brain needs to be working. You sit down on the floor in your respite block with your back against your recuperacoon. This is the first time you’re doing this on purpose, and you wipe suddenly sweaty palms on your pants before taking a deep breath, and sort of just...ease on out of your head.

It’s not a literal thing, just metaphorical. You can still feel your headache, your lungs, and your heart, your body sitting on the floor. It’s just that now you’re spilling outside of yourself, like something coming out of a pressurized can.

The first thing you do is, reach for Tavros. When you make contact, you can feel his heart speeding up and his breath getting short--he can sense your presence but he doesn’t understand what’s going on, he just knows he can sense something that scares him. There’s nothing you can do about that, so you try to make your visit in his think pan brief. You call up his memories of Serket. (You can feel him struggling, like someone being pulled under by a seatroll.) Somewhere in Tavros’ thinkpan, you’ll be able to find traces of her, and use that to find your way into Serket’s head.  

You see bits and pieces of Serket, bits and pieces of everything she’s ever said to Tavros, everything she’s done. These are all Tavros viewpoint though. He sees her as something sharply pretty and venomous, half-feral, something he can’t contain and would prefer to avoid or watch from a safe distance. Tavros is afraid of Vriska, and wishes that he weren’t.

When you dig a little more through layers and layers of thought/dream/memory you get slivers of viewpoint that don’t belong to Tavros. You get a sense of Serket’s memories, and the way she sees Tavros, and under that, you get a sense of her fears and frustrations. This is exactly what you’re looking for, and you gather these bits and pieces together until you have everything you’ll need when you go after Serket.   

(The weird part is, when you’re getting out, it feels as if he’s talking to you. It feels like he’s trying to hold you back, and you don’t know _how_ he knows it’s you, or _if_ he knows it’s you. You can feel his fear, but you can’t really sense his awareness. If he’s going “hey, what the fuck are you doing in my thinkpan” you don’t know, because you can’t hear him. What you have doesn’t really work like that. You just feel that his struggling is purposeful instead of panicked, somehow.)  

You pull yourself back into your own thinkpan when you think you have a good enough “feel” for the traces of Serket’s mind. When you wake up all the way you find that you’re being trolled. It’s Aradia, with the address and directions to Serket’s hive. You copy the address to your contact file. You’ll use the address later, right now, you’re just going to leave Serket a “present.” 

Before you can get started, you get trolled again, this time by Tavros.

 **[adiosToreador is now trolling terminallyCapricious!]**

AT: uH GAMZEE, iF IT’S OKAY TO CALL YOU GAMZEE AND NOT HIGHBLOOD, wAS THAT, yOU A LITTLE WHILE AGO, iN MY HEAD,

TC: I DoN’T NeEd aLl tHaT “hIgHbLoOd” ShIt, WeReN’T YoU CaLlInG Me bY My nAmE A FeW DaYs aGo mY BrO?

AT: eXCEPT YOU UH WENT INTO MY HEAD, aT LEAST, i THINK IT WAS YOU, aND IF IT WASN’T YOU, i’M UH, sORRY FOR SUGGESTING YOU DID UM, tHAT,

TC: BeInG AlL Up iN YoUr hEaD MeAnS YoU GoTtA CaLl mE “hIgHbLoOd” LiKe i wAs sOmE InDiGo yOu dIdN’T EvEn kNoW? wHaT’S EvEn wItH ThAt kInD Of sHiT?

AT: iT MEANS I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU DID THAT, aND UH WHAT I “SAW” WHEN YOU WERE THERE MADE ME UM UNEASY,

TC: I WaSn’t mEaNiNg tO Do tHaT. i tRiEd tO KeEp iT BrIeF. i nEeDeD To sEe sOmEtHiNg.

AT: tHAT’S UH WHY YOU’RE “HIGHBLOOD” JUST NOW, yOU WENT INTO MY HEAD AND UM, dIDN’T TELL ME WHY OR ASK,

TC: YoU’D LeT Me gO InTo yOuR ThInK PaN If i aSkEd?

AT: i DON’T KNOW, wHY DID YOU NEED TO GET INTO MY HEAD,

TC: So i cOuLd sEe tHe bItS SeRkEt lEfT BeHiNd, BrO.  

AT: wHY DID YOU NEED TO SEE THAT, iF IT’S OKAY TO ASK,

TC: ThOuGhT I’D HeLp mEgIdO OuT A LiTtLe. GiVe sErKeT A ReAsOn tO LiStEn. DiDn’t mEaN To pUt aNy hUrT On yOu, TaVrOs.

AT: aFTER WHAT HAPPENED TO TEREZI, i DON’T THINK I WANT ANYTHING ELSE TO HAPPEN, tO ANYONE,

TC: :o) I’M NoT GoNnA LeT AnYtHiNg eLsE HaPpEn, BrO.

 **[terminallyCapricious is “BaKiNg PiEs BrO”]**

Your head hurts even more after the exchange with Tavros. You have some more pie, and that makes the pain ease back a little. You also decide to heat up one of the meals that Karkat left and make yourself eat it all of it, even though you aren’t really hungry. After you set the dishes in the sink, wrap up the left over pie and put it in the thermal hull you settle back down by your recuperacoon and start concentrating.


	2. Vriska (poison in my pride)

_Vriska. Vriiiiiskaaaa. Vriiiiiissskkkkkkaaa._

There was someone standing over her recuperacoon. Vriska startled violently, or tried to; she couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw the breath to scream. She lay there, her blood pusher slamming against its bonecage, every instinct screaming for her to attack but her body refusing to respond to commands. 

 _She’s not answering._ (She could hear voices laughing, soft snickers.)

 _But she can hear us, now._ (There was a watery giggle that faded into a sob.)

 _Shhhh, don’t tell her we were here all along._ (This was answered by snickers.)

 _Your lusus is getting hungry, Vrisskaaaa. What are you going to do if you can’t feeeeeeeed her Vriskaaaa?_ (More shapes standing over her, strange hollow-eyed faces, grey skin stretched tight over bones.)

Vriska struggled against the invisible something that was holding her pinned, but this only resulted in laughter from the shadowy shapes. She tried to manipulate, but there was nothing to grab onto, there was no one there. It was just her in the room, despite what she was seeing, what she was hearing.

 _“Maybe you’re going crazy,”_ one of the whispers suggested.

 _“You **are** crazy. You can’t tell real life from a game,” _ a voice said contemptuously.

 _You were playing too_ , Vriska tried to say, but she didn’t have a voice, all that came out was a strangled noise. _You’re just jealous because I won!_

The faces hovering over her didn’t agree. They laughed, mouths splitting in wide grins, wider than any troll could grin. Jaws unhinged, revealing barbed tongues and teeth that looked too long and sharp to fit in any troll’s mouth. The things standing over her reached for her, and she screamed and screamed and screamed.

Flailing wildly, Vriska slid out of her recuperacoon and onto the floor. She landed hard on her broken arm, and screamed in an excess of terror and pain. She lay there gasping and shuddering, sunlight filtering through the edges of her curtains. She tried to rewrite it in her head as a scream of rage, but couldn’t manage it over the frantic beating of her blood pusher. “I won, I won and you’re fucking dead. You’re all fucking weak stupid and dead!” Vriska shouted.

 _“You and me? We’re through, Vriska. Team Scourge is disbanded.”_

Vriska froze. “T-terezi?” The voice she heard was coming from behind her. She turned over in that direction. There was no one there. She couldn’t be here. Terezi was--

 _“Dead,”_ Terezi’s voice said. _“Just like Tavros.”_  

“Tavros isn’t dead,” Vriska said. “He survived the fall.” _You were alive when I left you_ , she thinks.

 _“His back was broken. There’s no way he could survive on his own, so we culled him,”_ Terezi’s voice said.

“He’s not dead. He’s not!” Vriska shouted. She tried to get up, but slipped in the slime, bellyflopping on the carpet. She swallowed the scream as her arm was jarred again. “He-he was online just a few days ago. He’s not dead.” She was giving too much away, but she didn’t care. She was going to get up, get to the computer, and prove Terezi wrong.

She staggered to her feet and stumbled over to her computer. A number of people were online, including Tavros. With a feeling of smug triumph, she clicked on Tavros id. “See, I told you he was alive!”

 **[arachnidsGrip is now trolling adiosToreador!]**

AG: Hey Pupa!

AG: Toreasnore!

AG: Are you ignoring me? That’s so lame! 

AT: vriska. this is aradia. tavros doesn’t want to speak to you.

AG: So you’re speaking for him? Tell him I said he’s a coward!

AT: im under no obligation to relay that.

AT: and couldn’t anyway. he was happy at the end, and his regrets were easy to resolve. it would be immoral to call him away from the lilied way.

AG: I have no idea of what you just said.

AT: I mean he’s dead, and his spirit was the only one not interested in haunting you. right now we’re dividing his belongings according to his wishes.

AG: You culled him?

AG: You really culled him?

AT: the fall broke his back vriska. his caste doesn’t have access to the kind of medical care he’d need. If we took him to a clinic or hospice, they would have culled him anyway.

AT: and he didn’t want to die in a clinic.  

AG: You didn’t have to cull him. You should have told me what you were going to do first!

AT: why would I do that? you crippled tavros and then you killed terezi.

AG: Terezi isn’t dead. She was alive when I left her out there!

AT: and now she’s dead.

AG: You culled her too?!

AT: we weren’t able to do anything for her, she died on her own.

AT: so you’ll have to make reparations with the dead.

 **[adiosToreador is now “up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen”]**

Vriska stared numbly at the computer screen. It didn’t seem real, it couldn’t be real. “He wasn’t supposed to die,” she said. “I didn’t want him to die.”

 _Too bad, so sad,_ a voice whispered mockingly somewhere of to her left. _He didn’t even want to stick around to haunt you._

Ice ran down her spine as she turned in the direction of the voice and saw a girl in a FLARP costume based on a Cavalreaper armor design from a hundred sweeps ago. Her horns were spiraled spikes and her hair was short and curly. She looked familiar, but Vriska couldn’t remember the girl’s name. Behind her were other figures with shadowy yet almost familiar faces. _You’ll have to make reparations with the dead._

 _“If you didn’t want him to die, you shouldn’t have walked him off the cliff,”_ the girl in the Cavalreaper costume said.

 _“If you didn’t want him to die, you shouldn’t have herded him into a trap he couldn’t get out of,”_ a boy dressed like an ancient Centurviking said.

 _“But you did, so he is,”_ a voice sang out, prompting a wave of snickers.

 _“And now you’re going to pay!”_ Voices shouted eagerly, and the curtains were ripped from the window, allowing the blazing sunlight through.

Her windows were thick, polarized glass but there was enough light to make Vriska flinch hard, instinctively throwing up an arm to cover her face.  The movement caused her to start slipping out of the chair. She tried to steady herself, but this only resulted in taking the chair with her on the way down.

She landed in an awkward heap on the floor, crying in pain and squeezing her eyes shut. The sound of laughter filled her head and ignited her rage. Scrambling into a crouch, she launched herself in the direction of the voices. She passed through them, and it was like passing through a column of smoke. There was nothing to fight except the room itself, and she tore it apart trying to find something solid to hit.

When she came back to herself, she found that she was in the shower, and the water had turned cold. Vriska had no memory of having actually gotten into the shower or entering her ablution block. One moment she’d been in her room, the next, the ablution block.

She slowly staggered to her feet and fumbled the water off. This took a lot more effort than it should have. Somehow, she couldn’t focus; every movement seemed to require a great deal of forethought and planning. Her legs didn’t want to work and her feet felt as if they’d been shoved into socks lined with pins. After a few minutes of trying to get her circulation going again, she stepped out of the shower, heading for the towel rack.

 _Vrisskaaaaa. Vrissskaa._

“Shut the fuck up,” Vriska said. She meant for it to be a growl, but her voice cracked. The voices laughed, and kept up an endless seeming barrage of comments as she got dressed and returned to her room. On the way there, she’d see flickers of movement out of the corner of her eye, or suddenly feel as if someone had grabbed her arm or pushed her. The ghosts swirled around her in a cold damp breeze made of pure malice. There was nothing to get a hold of with her mind, and there was nothing there for her to hit.

After cleaning off her chair she sat back down at her computer. Tavros’ ID was no longer online but Aradia’s was. She was about to troll Aradia when a window popped up.

 **[terminallyCapricious is sending you a message! Do you want to respond?]**

TC: HeY SeRkEt, YoUr hIvE Is pReTtY MoThErFuCkInG BiG. i bEt aBoUt tWeNtY KiDs cOuLd aLl bE LiViNg hErE AnD NeVeR FuCkInG EvEn sEe eAcH OtHeR FoR PeRiGeEs.

TC: :o)

 **[terminallyCapricious is offline!]**

A voice snickered in her ear, making her flinch. _Vrissska. Vriska! Is she trying to ignore us again?_

“Shut up!” She was going to message Aradia and somehow get her to banish these stupid ghosts.

 **[arachnidsGrip is now trolling apocalypseArisen!]**

AG: I didn’t really want him dead, Aradia.

AG: I just wanted him to be stronger! I thought if I just pushed him harder enough he’d push 8ack.

AA: you walked him off of a cliff. you constantly attacked him for being a skylark outside of the game. you left terezi outside without any shelter.

AA: I am not even going to get into the other things you did.

AG: You’re the one who culled him!

AA: because you walked him off of a cliff, Vriska.

AG: 8luh! Just tell me what I have to do to make you get rid of these ghosts!

AA: i told you. make reparations.

AG: How!? They’re dead!

AA: what do you mean by “how?” O_O

AA: doesn’t your tradition have reparation rituals?

AG: I’m not in a Tradition. I get sent packets with my stipend, 8ut I just toss them.

AA: O_O

AA: >_<

AA: I’m going to guess you aren’t officially a member of any secular Traditions either.

AA: okay. we’ll do something really simple then. call each of them by name and apologize.

AG: Why should I apologize? they died 8ecause they lost the game, and I had to feed my lusus.

AA: in my tradition, you would apologize for having to kill them, and ask them for forgiveness. there are also offerings you would have to make.

AG: And if I do all this, you’ll get rid of the ghosts?

AA: if you did it sincerely, the ghost will leave on its own. you might have to do it several times until they’re willing to believe your sincerity.

AA: they really don’t like you at all.    

 **[apocalypseArisin is no longer trolling arachnidsGrip]**

Vriska glared at the message window and shoved herself away from the desk. “I don’t owe any of them any apologies,” she muttered. (She couldn’t even really remember any of their names.) She glared at the ghosts hovering around her desk. “You hear me? I don’t owe you anything.”

If Aradia wasn’t going to get rid of these ghosts, she’d _make_ her. Vriska reached out, trying to find Aradia’s mind, but sudden pain flared in the back of her head and she was knocked out of the chair and onto the floor, stunned and dizzy.  

She was flat on her back and there was a boy standing over her holding a pair of clubs. She realized that she knew about him in a distant sort of way. Indigo blood. Gamzee Makara. This was someone Terezi and Eridan had mentioned a few times. Why was he here? It was hard to focus, hard to think suddenly.   

“Gotta do something about your motherfucking _tells_ , chica,” the boy said mildly. “Couldn’t let you go and fuck up that sweet thing’s thinkpan.”

Vriska was even more confused. “Aradia?” She asked blankly.

“The psychopomp chica, yeah,” Gamzee said. “She was all, ‘I’m going to make her pay,’ and I was all ‘you know that bitch isn’t gonna listen, let a motherfucker help a sister out.’”


	3. Gamzee (is it any wonder that my joke’s an iron?)

The ghosts seem to think you’re pretty funny, or maybe it’s just the wide eyed look on Serket’s face that’s making them laugh. They’re giggling and calling Serket names, and for a moment she forgets about you to glare at the ghosts. You remind her with a little poke of the chucklevoodoo you put in her head. She bites her tongue hard to keep from screaming, and her eyes are back on you. “W-what did you do to me? How did you get in?” She asks, her voice shaking. You can feel her fear bleeding into anger and then turning into more fear. Scared as she is, she doesn’t call you “high blood,” so you give her a few points for that.

You grin at her, and don’t answer either question. “How often does your spidermom need to eat, Serket?”

“Why do you want to know?” Serket asks.

“So I know how long we have to play, Serket,” you say. You give the chucklevoodoo another poke and coax it into a daymare.  
She curls up like a bug on the floor and shakes. You pick her up and she thrashes around, trying to attack--she doesn’t do a very good job of it. She’s too disoriented by the chucklevoodoo to really fight. You only have to smack her once or twice when she tries to bite you. You carry her over to a couch in one of her hive’s meeting blocks and set her down. (What the fuck are you even going to do with all this fucking space when you live alone? The sumptuary laws don’t make no fucking sense whether you’re high or sober.) “Don’t move chica.” After rummaging around, you come up with a bottle of sopor.

“What is that? It looks like--“

“It’s sopor,” you say. “And you’re going to drink about half of this bottle.”

“Drink sopor?” Serket looks revolted at the idea. “There’s no way--“and she curls up again when you poke the chucklevoodoo.

“You’re going to drink it, chica, or I’m gonna make you think you’re being eaten by draugr.” You show her the creepy undead daymare she had earlier. Just a few seconds of it, but it’s enough.

“Okay, okay I’ll do it,” Serket gasps.

It turns out she was lying, because she tries attacking you when you go over to the couch. She’s still off balance enough that you don’t have too much trouble getting a hold of her. After some more wrestling, you manage to get half of the bottle into her as opposed to on her. She swears and screams about it, but soon the sopor takes hold and she goes all quiet and soft-faced, sprawled across your lap. It’s kind of pitiful. You pet her hair just because you can and she doesn’t do more than growl before her eyes start dropping closed. She fights the sleepiness, but the sopor pulls her down pretty fast. “You just stay right there, chica,” you tell her, and pet her hair a couple more times before lifting her off you and setting her down on the couch. You get out your sylladex and unlog some rope to tie her up. When you’re done making sure she won’t be going anywhere, you head to the computer.

Before you go snooping around, you open up a window and send a message to Aradia.

 **[arachnidsGrip is now trolling apocalypseArisin]**  
AG: ChIcA. yOu aLrIgHt?  
AG: SpIdErGiRl wAs aBoUt tO LaY SoMe sPiDeRhOoDoO On yOu, So i cLuBbEd hEr.  
AA: im okay.  
AA: is she...  
AG: I PoUrEd sOmE SoPoR DoWn hEr tHrOaT. aBoUt hAlF A BoTtLe--ShE’S NoT GoInG AnYwHeRe oR DoInG AnYtHiNg fOr a wHiLe.  
AG: ChIcA, yOu KnOw HoW oFtEn ShE fEd HeR lUsUs?  
AA: At least twice a month. Her Flarping definitely had a pattern.  
AG: We cLoSe tO ThE NeXt fEeDiNg tImE?  
AA: I think so.  
AG: We’lL FiGuRe oUt wHaT To dO, wHeN ThE TiMe cOmEs, I GuEsS.  
 **[arachnidsGrip is no longer trolling apocalypseArisen]**  


You start going through her computer. She has a lot of games on her computer, and a lot of movies and television programs. There are also some homework folders for classes she’s been taking. After exploring some of the files you come across folder marked “Stories.” You open it and click on one of the documents, In_Which_Mindfang_Eventually_Pwns_a_Rebel.docx.

> The gambligant strode confidently across the deck, her high heeled boots making sharp tock, tock, tock sounds as she slowly circled her prisoner.The prisoner, a brown blooded troll with huge sweeping horns, his short hair raised up in a crimson crest of spikes who had been tied to the main mast, glared up at the smirking Mindfang from his position on his knees, a sneer of defiance showing blunt fangs. His arms had been tied behind him, and his wings were crushed against the mast. “You may think you have won, gambligant,” the other declared, “but I will have the last laugh in the end!”
> 
> “Oh, I know I have won, and plan to amuse myself presently,” Mindfang declared. “And will continue to laugh long after you are in your grave. What could you possibly do against me? Your forces are mounted and land based, and now you are on the high seas!”
> 
> The defiant brown blood laughed. “Not all of my forces are land-based, queen of gambligants, and one in particular is should be well known to you.” And as he spoke, a flash of white descended from the clouds, the indecently powerful Pyralspite, the former lusus of the foolish teal-blood dove at the ship, almost playfully sending a stream of fire amidships!
> 
> “Pyralspite!” Mindfang shouted. “Fire on that be-damned dragon!” She howled to her crew. She struck at the brown-blood with her quirt, but he only laughed. She tried to control him, but a wave of rats and vermin swarmed up from the hold, and she was distracted by the diseased and noisome flood. The brown blood was laughing, and directing a few of the vermin into gnawing through the leather thongs binding him.
> 
> A few of the crew attempted to stop him, but he batted them aside as if they were mere children.
> 
> “It seems I’m the one laughing after all, dear Mindfang,” the brown-blood declared with a laugh, and his wings unfurled, not nearly as damaged as they had first appeared and leapt skyward to meet the dragon in the air. “Perhaps you’ll get the best of me someday, but today is not that day!”

You skim through the story, which is pretty long, with lots of battles and daring escapes in just the nick of time. The other stories are pretty much the same, all kind of adventures with explosions. The “long horned brown blood” sounds a little like Tavros from the description, and there’s a recurring “foolish teal-blood Legislacerator” who sounds a little like Terezi.

You poke around a little more on the computer, read Serket’s Trollian logs, and then get up to check up on her. She’s woken back up, but her eyes are a little glassy. She blinks up at you in brief confusion and then tries on a glare. You don’t think anything of it at first, but then you feel a little flicker in the back of your head. It’s like a spider looking for a nice place to spin herself a nice new web. Or maybe a spider that didn’t realize that whatever was wiggling in the middle of the web was too fucking big for her.

She pokes her way into your head, but she doesn’t get far, her claws scrabbling on slick-sharp surfaces she can’t get a purchase on. It doesn’t stop her from trying though, she keeps pushing, and you just keep standing still until she sort of falls back into herself, eyes squinched shut from the exertion. She’s pale and sweating, and she looks like she’s going to hurl--and then she does, all over herself, the couch and the floor. She curses and cries, all frustrated-embarrassed, and you clean up the mess as best you can.  
When she’s cleaned up she still looks sick, but she glares at you blearily. “What do you want from me, Makara?” She ask, her voice raspy from having thrown up all over the place. She’s trying really hard not to be scared, but she isn’t doing a very good job of hiding it. Not that she could hide it from you, or keep you from blowing on the embers a little.

“Same thing my red-blooded sister wants, chica. The same thing all these ghosts want. A little payback for what you did.”

“I-I didn’t do anything wrong! He was just a brown blood,” Vriska says. “He was trying to quit because he wouldn’t take the loss.”

“You said you didn’t want him dead, chica,” you say, and she flinches and then tries to work up some outrage. “Why’d you walk him off a fucking cliff, if you didn’t want him dead?”

“You went through my computer?” she asks angrily.

You grin, and send her line right back to her, “you’re just a blue blood. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She flinches, and gets all quiet. Only it’s not really a scared quiet, you can see the gears ticking away in her head. “I really didn’t want him dead,” she says.

“Too late now,” you say, and give the chucklevoodoo in her head a poke. She shudders. “I’m going to untie you, and you’re not going to try to do anything that’ll make me mad, Serket. We got a deal?” She nods frantically. You let her loose, but you don’t let go of the chucklevoodoo. You also don’t let go of her, you’ve got her by a fistful of hair. “Now, you’re going to have a little more sopor and then you’re going back into your recuperacoon.”

Vriska shudders in disgust. “No! It’s disgusting! You’re not supposed to ingest that crap--”

“Chica,” you say warningly, and give her a little shake that makes her gasp and growl a little. “You don’t get to fucking argue with me about this, girl.”

“It made me throw up! Excuse me if I don’t want to barf on the rug again!”

You almost press the point, set it down so strict she doesn’t have any room for protest--but you don’t want to clean her up again. “Fine.” You stand up and drag her along with. She yelps and struggles, but you don’t let up, and when she tries to kick you, you tap her good arm and ask her if she wants them both broken. That makes her stop struggling and behave. When you get to her respite block you let her loose. “Get into your recuperacoon.” Serket glares at you, but obeys, muttering under her breath.

“There ain’t anything poisonous in the sopor, Serket,” you tell her. “If there was, you wouldn’t be able to use it as bedding. Anyway, how do you know you haven’t ever eaten any in your sleep?”

From the look on her face it seemed like she hadn’t ever thought of that. She scrambled back into her recuperacoon, grunting with pain when she jostled her arm. She settles in, still grumbling as she lays back in the slime. “Why do you care about Toreasnore anyway?”

You don’t answer her right away. “He’s a nice kid who didn’t deserve to get walked off a cliff,” you say. “Go to sleep Serket.”

She grumbles at you, complaining that she can’t sleep with someone in her block, but after a while she goes to sleep.

After a while, you poke around in her block. You aren’t looking around for anything particular, but you manage to find a battered looking old journal. It’s got Serket’s exact color and sign on it. You wonder if this is more of her stories, but the book looks and feels genuinely old, not something deliberately battered so that it would look old. You flip through the book for a while, occasionally getting distracted by the ghosts that are hovering around the room. They’re mostly hovering over Serket’s recuperacoon, but a few of them are watching you.  
You leave the room with the journal and head for the food preparation block. The ghosts don’t follow. After rummaging around in her food storage shelves and her thermal hull, you wonder if you caught her between grocery runs, because there isn’t a lot there. Just some snack food and soft drinks. You grab a bag of chips and a soda, sit down at the table and unlog your husktop. The instant you get online, you get a message from Karkat.

 **[carcinoGeneticist is now trolling terminallyCapricious]**  
CG: GAMZEE YOU LEFT YOUR DOOR UNLOCKED AND ALSO, IT WAS OPEN. ARE YOU TRYING TO GET EVERYTHING IN YOUR HIVE STOLEN OR WRECKED? WHERE ARE YOU?  
TC: SeRkEt’s. HoW’S ReZi aNd tAvBrO DoInG?  
CG: THEY’RE OKAY, THOUGH BOTH OF THEM, ESPECIALLY TAVROS FOR SOME STRANGE REASON ARE WORRIED ABOUT YOU. THEY SEEM TO THINK I HAVE SOME KIND OF SPECIAL INFLUENCE ON YOU AND TOLD ME TO GO DOWN TO YOUR HIVE AND TALK YOU OUT OF DOING ANYTHING STUPID. I TRIED TO EXPLAIN THAT ANY APPEARANCE OF INFLUENCE IS ACTUALLY THE RESULT OF SOME STRANGE VARIATION ON SERENDIPITY WHERE SOMETHING I SAY THAT MAKES GOOD SENSE JUST HAPPENS TO COINCIDE WITH YOU ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING THAT ISN’T MINDNUMBINGLY RIDICULOUS, BUT OF COURSE, THEY DIDN’T LISTEN TO ME EITHER.  
TC: Aw bRo, YoU KnOw i lIsTeN To eVeRyThInG YoU SaY ThAt iSn’t bUlLsHiT. :o)  
TC: SiNcE YoU’Re aT My hIvE, dO YoU ThInK YoU CaN BrInG SoMe sTuFf bY? sErKeT DoEsN’T HaVe a lOt oF FoOd iN HeR PlAcE.  
CG: YES, WHY DON’T I DO THAT AND BECOME A SICKLE-WIELDING PUPPET FOR SERKET TO SLICE YOU INTO RIBBONS WITH. FOR THAT MATTER, HOW DO I KNOW THIS IS REALLY YOU?  
CG: ADLASDJFLDFJ;  
CG: OKAY IT’S YOU.  
CG: YOU GIANT FUCK ASS.  
TC: VrIsKa cAn’t rEaLlY GeT InTo mY HeAd. I WoN’T LeT HeR GeT InTo yOuRs.  
CG: IT WORRIES ME WHEN YOU’RE SO CONFIDENT. I’LL BRING YOU GROCERIES.  
 **[carcinoGeneticist is no longer trolling terminallyCapricious!]**  



	4. Karkat (I’ve opened up my veins too many times)

Karkat instantly regretted signing off so quickly, but didn’t try to troll Gamzee again. He should have tried to ask if there was something specific he should bring instead of just logging supplies at random. He blamed being rattled by Gamzee’s “proof” of his identity.  
If Gamzee was completely sober, he was probably starting to get a headache. Karkat immediately went up to Gamzee’s ablution block and logged the first aid kit (first making sure it was stocked) and most of the contents of the medicine cabinet. He was heading toward to the food prep block when he heard the front door open. “Gamzee!” A girl’s voice called. “If you won’t lock the door, you should really get a wire at least!”

Karkat froze at the sound of the girl’s voice, which had a definite sea-dweller accent. He could hear her moving from the mudroom to the main meeting area of the hive. The voice sounded friendly, so she couldn’t be one of Gamzee’s asshole neighbors, but the “friendly” in her tone would probably change really quick if she caught him in Gamzee’s hive. Karkat started backing up, going the way he came, but the stealth gods were not with him; somehow, one of Gamzee’s fucking horns ended up under his foot. It honked and he startled, losing his balance and falling backward, landing flat on his back.

The girl appeared almost instantly. She was pretty, with spiky, tilted horns that echoed her sign. She was definitely a sea-dweller, and much to Karkat’s overwhelming horror, the highest ranked one. Feferi Peixes, the Heiress of Her Imperial Condescension. Weirdly, she looked surprised and pleased to see him, instead of hostile and suspicious. “Oh! You’re Karkat Vantas, aren’t you?”  
“Yes your highness,” Karkat said. He sat up and levered himself slowly and cautiously to his feet. He wondered how the hell she even knew who he was.

“I’m so happy to meet you,” Feferi Peixes said excitedly. “You shore are a hard buoy to ketch!”

“I--what?” Karkat wondered if he’d managed to hit his head. He hit his head and was having some kind of weird dream. That could be the only logical reasonable explanation for the Heiress to be wanting to meet him.

Feferi giggled. “I’ve heard a lot a boat you from all your fronds, but I’ve never been able to meet you!”

“My friends?” Karkat asked blankly.

She smiled and started ticking off degrees of separation. “Makara is your friend and talks about you a lot. I’m so glad he was able to make a friend! His neighbors are so mean to him! Pyrope knows Makara and I’ve spoken to her a few times. She makes that Flarping thing she does sound like so much fun, I wish I could play, but I can’t. I met Megido through Pyrope. Such a sweet girl, and so smart! You know Pyrope because of your friendship with Captor and Aradia, and I know Captor through Megido--he helped me upgrade my computer and got rid of some spyware for me. But! While I have heard of you from everyone, I have never been able to meet you!” She paused dramatically, raising a finger to point at him. “You are the mysterious stranger, and I’ve caught you at last!”

“I. Um?”

She giggled again. “I’m sorry; I bubble a lot when I’m excited! Is Gamzee around?”

He shook his head. “Not right now, your highness--” he started, but she interrupted him.

“Peixes!” She said, and grinned him, “Or Feferi. Being formal when you don’t have to is just silly. Where is he?”

“He went out to visit someone,” Karkat said. “I just came by to see if he had locked up, and if he hadn’t, that he didn’t leave his keys or something.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Vantas,” Feferi said, seeming to take him at his word. At least, she didn’t ask who Gamzee had gone to see.

“I’m sorry I missed him. Please tell him I came by when you see him.” She smiled. “I hope I can ketch you again later!.”

“Yeah, sure,” Karkat said. “Your high--I mean Peixes.”

She bounced a little. “Sea you skater!” She said, and headed off.

When Karkat was sure she was gone, he quickly headed to the food preparation block. Though Gamzee was out of it a lot of the time, he usually made it to his caste’s distribution center at least twice a perigee. Though he forgot to eat a lot of the time, or only ate the pies he made, he did have a general idea of proper nutrition.

Karkat packed as much food from the thermal hull and food storage shelves as would fit conveniently into his sylladex, then went in search of Gamzee’s keys. Karkat wasn’t surprised at all that Gamzee had forgotten them. After checking the computer and getting the directions for Vriska’s hive, he left Gamzee’s hive, locking the door behind him.

He rode his two-wheeled vehicle to a public transport stop and took the transport as far as he could. There were very few lowbloods on the transport, but he didn’t get into any trouble with the highbloods over his anonymous symbol. He got out at the stop closest to Vriska’s hive and rode his two wheeled device up the trail to Vriska’s hive. The trail up to the hive was extremely close to the canyon where Vriska’s lusus had her nest--he could see the strands and cables of webbing out of the corner of his eye, and every flutter of a breeze created creepy movements and shadows. Worse still was the lusus herself. Karkat could swear the thing was watching him, anticipating a meal.

Gamzee was waiting for him in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. He looked like he’d been trampled on by a herd of hoofbeasts. “Hey bro,” Gamzee said in a sleepy-sounding voice that somehow made the chills worse. “Did you bring some food?”

Karkat nodded. “I also got a first aid kit for you.”

Gamzee smiled. “Bro, you think of all kinds of shit. Come on in.” He gestured toward the interior of the building.

After a moment’s hesitation, Karkat walked past Gamzee into the entry block of the hive. The interior was messier than Gamzee’s hive, and it stank. There were cobwebs in the rafters and he could hear weird noises coming from the grates. Shadowy half-seen shapes flittered just out of the corner of his eyes, making his hair try to stand on end. One of the shadows slid into closer view, a thin boy with horns that branched into twin hooks. Dead white eyes turned to look at him and a mouth full of bloody broken teeth grinned at him. “Oh god,” Karkat said, jerking away from the apparition as his blood pump hammered against his ribs.

“Ghosts,” Gamzee said suddenly, making Karkat jump a little. “Aradia’s one powerful sister. C’mon over to the food prep block.”

“I probably should have found out if there was anything you specifically wanted me to grab,” Karkat said. “But...” He trailed off, not having a way to say, “but you scared the shit out of me so I didn’t think of it,” that wouldn’t sound like an accusation.

“It’s all right,” Gamzee said. “Let’s see what you got.”

“Where’s Serket?” Karkat asked as he headed into the food prep block and began to empty out his sylladex.

“Upstairs asleep,” Gamzee said. “Pyrope broke her arm. It might need to get looked at. She fell on it a lot. I also hit her upside the head when she tried using her spider-hoodoo.” Gamzee made a critical sounding noise. “Girl put her hand to her head. You don’t even fucking _need_ to do that, least I don’t."

“I’ll take your word for it,” Karkat said, and tried not to sound as uneasy as he felt. He was used to Gamzee being placid and calm. He’d say the weirdest shit when he was high, and it would be creepy sometimes, but Gamzee sober was an entirely different level of creepy.

He was obviously extremely bad at keeping the uneasiness out of his voice because Gamzee was frowning at him. “All I’m doing, is keeping her from doing anything to Aradia,” he said. “If she gets hurt flopping around because she’s scared, it’s _penance_ ,” Gamzee said. He sounded a little hurt. “Don’t get scared of me bro.”

“I’m not,” Karkat said, then, “okay yeah, I’m scared,” when Gamzee gave him a look that said, _you are so fucking full of shit_.

“You don’t have to be scared of me. You’re an upright motherfucker and my best friend. You and my sea-sister are the only two who never were afraid of me. Even Terezi was scared of me, but you never were,” Gamzee said, sounding hurt.

“Shit. I was more scared of your lusus,” Karkat said. “He could have eaten me and my lusus in a couple bites. Let’s get this stuff put up somewhere.”

After unloading and storing the food and the first aid kit, Karkat got Gamzee to take something for his headache, and eat. It was almost like normal, with Gamzee allowing Karkat to nag him into taking care of himself. Yet there was also something different. Gamzee’s eyes were a little clearer, his voice a little more certain, and there was a strange edge underneath the tone that made Karkat a little nervous. “The Heiress wanted you to know that she stopped by your place,” Karkat said.

Gamzee grinned. “She came by? She’s been wanting to meet you for a while now.”

“She said. Apparently everyone was talking about me behind my back, saying who knows what to her.” The idea that people were talking about him to anyone was more than a little unnerving. That they were gabbing away as if they were a colony of cawing beakbeasts to the Heiress was kind of frightening.

“Aww, it wasn’t like that,” Gamzee said. “No one was saying anything bad about you.”

“Right, this is me we’re talking about. Of course they said bad things about me.”

Gamzee snorted, the stupid asshole. “No they didn’t. We all like that you’re an angry little motherfucker who can’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it.”

“Wow, thanks,” Karkat said. “I’m completely fucking touched by your regard.” He might have gone into more detail on the subject, but the look on Gamzee’s face makes him stop. It’s a warm and weirdly relieved look and it made Karkat feel vaguely guilty for having been so unnerved earlier.

“Now you sound more like you,” Gamzee said, and wrapped his arm around Karkat’s shoulders, pulling Karkat against his chest in a hug.

“Right,” Karkat said, and tried to twist out of Gamzee’s grip. It didn’t really work all that well. “Quit it,” Karkat said as he tried to squirm loose. “You said something about Serket hitting her arm?”

Gamzee nodded, and finally let Karkat go. “Might need to take her to a hospice, get her arm looked at,” Gamzee said. “Or get sea-sis to come take a look.” Gamzee walked around the table, and picked up a book that had been lying there. He pushed it over to Karkat. “Speaking of looking--found this in Serket’s respite block.”

Karkat picked it up. “A diary? Serket’s?” It was heavy and looked really old, the cover was real leather, and the writing wasn’t like modern writing at all.

“I don’t think so. Think you could get the bone-digging sister to look at it? Find out if it’s real or not?” Gamzee asked.

“Aradia?” Karkat asked. “Okay, but why?”

“It has to do with Ancestors, bro,” Gamzee said. “That’s Serket’s sign and color, if it hasn’t been discolored. I need to know if it’s the real thing.” Gamzee sighed, and scratched absently just behind his ear. “I’m just trying to figure her out.” He shrugged.

“She’s creepy and she walks people off cliffs, there’s not a lot to figure out there,” Karkat said. “I’ll give it to Aradia.”

“Thanks bro,” Gamzee said.

Karkat was about to log the book and ask Gamzee if he needed anything else, but instead, he turned and walked out of the food preparation block, the book still in his hand. He tried to stop himself, but he found that he couldn’t. Gamzee seemed to realize immediately what was going on, because he shouted “SERKET!” in a voice that nailed Karkat’s feet to the floor, and was answered by a shrill scream from somewhere outside the block, followed by a series of thumps.

And then his thinkpan was full of blue wind and indigo lightning. Karkat curled up, battered and overwhelmed by the psychic battle. It was brief, vicious and left Karkat with a nauseating headache, his eyes full of twisting lights. He was aware of Gamzee talking to him in a low voice. Gamzee sat him down at the table. “Sorry bro,” Gamzee said, and gave him some medicine from the first aid kit. “I’ll go deal with Serket. You abscond the minute you stop seeing the lights, got that?”

Karkat nodded, and Gamzee ruffled his hair and then headed out of the food preparation block. He could hears Gamzee and Vriska talking, then shouting. The argument was accompanied by occasional comments and taunts from the ghosts. The argument faded after a while, retreating to some other part of the hive. When the headache had receded, Karkat logged the journal and absconded.


	5. Vriska (poison’s in my heart and in my mind)

“Girl, what the fuck do you think you’re doing to my best friend?” Gamzee asked. His voice seemed to echo inside her head. He loomed over her, and he seemed to be surrounded by a sort of hazy indigo blur. The ghost snickered and laughed at her, calling her names.

“I’m defending myself from hive invaders,” Vriska shot back. She was trying for hostility, but she was shaking so it came out wobbly and weak. She was on her ass again but the room spun dizzily, so she actually didn’t mind that much, because she didn’t think she could stand. 

“He was bringing food, which you don’t have a lot of,” Gamzee pointed out.

“I have plenty of food!”

“It’s all high-energy shit and snack food,” Gamzee said. “That crap ain’t healthy to be eating all the time.”

“How the fuck are you even a nutritionist? You eat sopor!” Vriska shouted back. “It isn’t any of your business what I eat!” She staggered onto her feet, but the room swayed and her stomach lurched. She fell against Gamzee, or maybe he caught her, she wasn’t too clear on which it was.

“Shit,” Gamzee said, and picked her up off her feet. She tried to struggle, but that didn’t work out any better than standing had. “Stop wiggling around, I’m trying to help,” he muttered and carried her back to her respite block. Vriska closed her eyes because she didn’t want to see the ghosts swirling around them.

“Fuck you, you’re the one that did this to me!”

He set her down then held her when her legs buckled under her. He set her down in the computer chair, and then squatted down in front of her. “You’re the one that keeps doing stupid shit and falling on your ass,” Gamzee said. “I’m just here to keep you from being any more stupid.”

“And help yourself to my stuff,” Vriska muttered.               

The high blood snickered. “Gambligant girl crying thief in the day, thinks she’s a pirate, gonna make them pay. Hell fuck and damn I don’t know what to say. It sounds like a joke but she’s serious, all go for broke for this piratical sea-smoke.”

She seriously thought about kicking him for that, but her head hurt and her arm was screaming and she couldn’t really think straight. Everything was all fuzzy, and the best she could muster was a weak, “Fuck you.”

“I’m going to put you back in the recuperacoon,” Gamzee said. “You look like shit, so I’m gonna call someone. You give _her_ any shit, and she’ll probably cull you.” With that, he picked her up and slid her into the recuperacoon. She floundered, too dizzy and sick to really struggle.

“What? Who?” She really didn’t want another high blood in her home. This stupid indigo was bad enough.

“My sea-sister,” Gamzee said, just as dizziness and sopor dragged Vriska under again.

When Vriska woke up again she felt fuzzy headed and somehow still tired. She could hear voices just outside her respite block, talking in low voices. (Living voices, not the scratchy voices of the dead. Vriska really wished she couldn’t tell the difference now.) She couldn’t make out what they were saying. One of the voices was Gamzee and the other was a girl with a seadweller accent. She sat up, blinking blearily as Gamzee and the girl entered. The girl, t _he Heiress_ approached, carrying a heavy looking satchel. “Hello, Serket,” Peixes said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like an indigo clown hit me with a club,” Vriska growled, glowering at Makara.

Makara, standing behind the Heiress, smiled. “Maybe you shouldn’t’ve been trying to get your spider-hoodoo on,” he said.

“Maybe Aradia shouldn’t have sicced her stupid ghosts on me!”

“They’re _your_ ghosts,” Gamzee replied with a glare. 

Vriska started to reply, but Peixes interrupted, clicking sharply at the both of them. _Shut up_ , that particular sound meant. When Eridan made that sound she usually ignored it, but in this case, it would probably be a bad idea. Peixes smiled. “Thank you,” she said, and approached the recuperacoon. “Let me help you out.” The way she said it, it seemed more like a command than an offer. Moving hurt, but Peixes took hold and gently hauled Vriska out of the recuperacoon. She looked at Vriska’s splinted and bandaged arm with extreme disapproval. “You just splinted it? You didn’t go to a hospice?” She asked.

Vriska glared, not wanting to answer.

Makara snickered. “The nearest hospice is pretty far from here, and Serket doesn’t have anyone to watch her back.”

Vriska hissed, because it was mostly true. “I got Zahhak to set it for me,” she grumbled. He’d x-rayed her arm and used some kind of robotic clamping device to set the bone. He had also spent what seemed like hours describing exactly what kind of break it was, and how lucky she was that it wasn’t a spiral fracture. He hadn’t had anything to make a cast with though. He had just splinted her arm, and told her to be careful. (She privately thought he was hoping she’d get an infection so he could chop it off and replace it with one of the robotic arms he was working on.)   

Peixes clicked again, disapprovingly. “Whale, it’s a good thing you called me, Gamzee,” she said. “And I brought my satchel.” She smiled at Vriska. “Let’s get you cleaned up, Serket,” She said and stood up, tugging Vriska along with her. The Heiress helped Vriska to the ablution block, and over Vriska’s protests, cleaned her up. She also told Gamzee to go make something to eat for all of them. She grinned cheerfully at the dismayed noise Vriska couldn’t help making. “He’s a reely good cook, Serket! Even when he’s a little drifty because of sopor.”

“How much of what he cooks has sopor in it?” Vriska asked as the Heiress wrapped a towel around Vriska. A second towel was wrapped around her hair and then Peixes gently nudged Vriska out of the ablution block and down the hall.

Peixes giggled. “Just the pies! It’s a little too sweet to put in anything else.” Vriska stared. “You’ve eaten that stuff?”

Another giggle. “Maaaybe a little,” the Heiress said. “I’d rather sleep in it! It’s too sweet, and there isn’t a lot of nutritional value.”  

Vriska was about to say something along the lines of, “it’s too sweet? That’s what your problem with eating sopor is?” when she realized something. There were no ghosts anywhere near her or the Heiress. She couldn’t even hear their voices. “You made the ghosts go away,” she said. “You got rid of Aradia’s ghosts!”

“They’re _your_ ghosts,” Peixes said, echoing Gamzee. The Heiress frowned. “And they’re still here, they’re just avoiding me.” She steered Vriska back into the respite block and sat her down in the computer chair.

“Aradia sent them,” Vriska muttered.

“They’re _your_ dead,” Peixes said firmly, and with a really weird emphasis. She gave Vriska a stern look that momentarily made her seem a lot older than she was. “Now I’m going to look at your arm,” She said, and gently began to untie the splint. She used a handheld med scanner to examine the break. “Zahhak did not do as badly as I thought. He should have given you something a little more slime-proof though.” She rummaged around in her medical kit, and gave Vriska an anesthetic for her arm. “I’m going to have to realign the break, and then I’ll put a cast on it.” She went to work with calm efficiency.

Vriska was impressed. FLARPers were good at patching themselves or each other up when they were hurt, but Peixes was nearly as good as a medical drone.  “Why are you so good at this? It doesn’t seem like you’d have to be,” Vriska asked once Peixes set her arm and started on wrapping it up in a resin cast.      
“Most kids won’t go to the hospice if they’re too badly hurt or sick because they might get culled,” Peixes said. “And most kids don’t have access to the kind of stuff I can have brought down, so I started taking first aid and medical courses.” Peixes smiled. “I reely like kelping people.”   

When Peixes was done with the cast, she took out her sylladex and took out some medical sleeping pads. “Here. You’ll be able to get the cast wet, but climbing into and out of your recuperacoon isn’t really good for your arm.”  

“Thanks,” Vriska said. The Heiress wasn’t anything like she had expected, or heard about. (Not that she had heard very much. Eridan had been really closed mouth where his moirail was concerned. And she hadn’t ever heard that Peixes was friends with Makara.)

 “You’re welcome, Serket,” Peixes said. She took Vriska by the hand, tugging her toward the door. “You can show me around your hive!” 

Vriska tried to play hostess, though she was a little distracted by her “guest.” The ghosts continued to keep their distance, though every so often, Vriska would see a shadow that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. After showing Peixes most of the major areas of her hive, Vriska asked, “Your highness--“ Vriska began.

“Peixes!”

“Peixes,” Vriska repeated. “Why don’t the ghosts come near you?”

“They just don’t,” Peixes said. “I think they’re afraid I’ll trap them in a mirror made of sea glass or something.”  

It sounded like something out of one of Tavros’ stupid fairytales. “Why would they believe that?”

“Oh, one of the powers I’m supposed to have is the ability to trap souls in objects, usually mirrors, but sometimes hairpins or swords. There’s an entire epic about the Empress and her first kismesis! He died, but she bound his soul to a mirror so she could keep him with her, then it was stolen by a slave so she went on a rampage trying to find it. Then there’s this whole long part about the mirror falling into the hands of various people until the Empress is able to recover it again. Then there are a bunch of stories where she has a whole collection of souls trapped in crystals that she hangs from the ceiling of her respite block,” Peixes said. “And the ones where she has hairpins made from the bones of her enemies and they give her advice.” 

“Do they really believe that?” Vriska asked. “I mean, these aren’t really old ghosts or anything, who might believe something like that.”

“It wouldn’t matter. Old stories have a life of their own,” Peixes said in a slightly creepy tone. “I mean, considering the powers I do have, imprisoning souls in hairpins is kind of small fishes.”

It was the kind of statement that begged a question. “Other powers?” Vriska asked.

Peixes’ smile was extremely unsettling. “If I don’t want someone to die, then they won’t,” she said. “Even if I’ve just stabbed them in the heart with my culling fork.”   

Vriska couldn’t help but shiver. “Oh.”

Peixes’ smile grew even wider, baring all of her very sharp fangs. “Am I making you uncomfortable, Serket?”

“N-no, of course not,” Vriska said.

“Liar,” Peixes said with a giggle. She caught Vriska by her good arm and started towing her down the hall. “Let’s go see what Gamzee is up to.” Vriska didn’t even try to resist--Peixes was unbelievably strong.

What Gamzee was up to was frying stuffed dumplings. He was using a spoon and a fork to fish the dumplings out of the hot oil and into a bowl lined with absorbent paper. Another bowl full of dumplings had already been set out on the table. The smell of the dumplings made Vriska’s mouth water, but this didn’t stop her from saying, “I see the error of my ways, fried grease packets are much more healthy than energy drinks.” Then she squeaked because Peixes pinched her.

“Well, you don’t have to eat any if you don’t want,” Gamzee said in an amiable tone. He set the second batch of dumplings down on the table next to the first bowl. “One’s minced shrimp, the other’s hoofbeast.”  

Peixes snagged one of the dumplings and popped it into her mouth. A few quick chews followed by a gulp and it was gone. “These are really good!” She said, and snagged another dumpling as she sat down at the table.

“Thanks, sis,” Gamzee said, and set down a few bottles of soda before sitting across from Peixes.  

Vriska hovered for a moment, and then plopped carelessly into the chair next to Peixes. She tried one of the dumplings, which really were surprisingly good. She must have been hungrier than she thought, because she ended up eating six of them, one after the other. “These are pretty good,” she said, and had another.

“Gamzee’s the best cook,” Peixes said, and ate another dumpling. “How’s your head?” She asked abruptly, glancing in Gamzee’s direction.

“It’s better,” Gamzee said. “Serket’s probably worse off.”

“I’m fine,” Vriska said. “I’d be better if you weren’t here.”

“Sooner you get your repentance on, the sooner I’m gone,” Gamzee said.

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do!” Vriska said, and hated the slight whine she could hear in her voice. “All Aradia said was that I had to apologize, and she said it probably wouldn’t work.”

“Not if you don’t mean it,” Peixes said.

“And I won’t, because I had to feed my lusus,” Vriska said. “I won and they lost, and that’s all that matters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why am I desperately craving gyoza right now?


	6. Gamzee (experiments that failed too many times)

You are pretty sure your sea-sister thinks that you are a little black for Serket, and she has apparently decided to be your middle leaf. You think she is not far wrong. What you are feeling right now (aside from your headache and the craving for more sopor) is an irritated near-admiration for the spider girl’s stubborn. Vriska might have been spooked at first, but she didn’t stay scared. Normally that would be a good sign, but in Serket’s case, she didn’t stay scared because she’s got no sense.

Feferi takes the spider girl in hand for you, taking care of her and talking her ears off. Then your good sea-sister gives you something that takes the edge off the pain in your pan. Last of all, she sends you off to sleep in Serket’s recuperacoon. You complain a little about that, make like she’s pale cheating on Ampora, but she isn’t having any of it. Before you head off, she warns you not to eat any of the sopor. The warning is (mostly) unnecessary.

“Sis, there’s no way I’d eat anything Serket’s been drooling in,” you tell her, and settle into the recuperacoon.

“I don’t drool!” Serket says.

“You snore. If you snore your mouth’s open, so you drool.”

Vriska starts to say something, but Feferi gives her a look, and Vriska cuts herself off. You want to make a joke about that, but she gives you the same look. “Go to sleep Gamzee,” Feferi says. “I’ll talk to Serket.” The way she says it makes you a little uneasy. You know she don’t disagree with you, but you can also tell that she wants to know more about what happened than you were willing tell her when you contacted her. You do what she says though, because your thinkpan feels like boiled over death right about now.

You go under into tangled up dreams that are left over bits from Serket’s daymares, influence from the ghosts, and for some reason, the first time you met Karkat. When you wake back up, it’s mostly quiet. You slip out of the ‘coon, scrape off, and head for the ablution block. After a quick shower you dress and wander around Serket’s castle a bit. You wonder if she’s ever got lost in this tangled up maze of corridors.

After a time you find your way back to Serket’s main living area. Spider girl’s fast asleep on a medical sleeping pad. Feferi’s on the couch, tapping a way on her shellpad. She looks up when you come into the room and you can see that your sea-sister has a black eye and a split lip. A closer look at Vriska reveals new neatly bandaged wounds. “What the hell happened, and how’d I miss the ruckus?” You ask.

“Vris’ spidermom started calling,” Feferi explained. “She’s probably still calling. Vris’ decided seadweller sushi was on the menu.” She sounded completely calm about it, and maybe a little amused.  “I knocked her out and sedated her.”

“What’s going to happen now?” You ask, because it seems like things have gone to a completely new level.

“We keep Vriska under and get her out of range of her mom,” Feferi says in a businesslike tone. “I’ve asked Aradia to call off the dead, which might prove a little harder than summoning them, if the lore is right. I’ve also told Zahhak that he’s going to have to move temporarily, on the off chance spidermom gets hungry enough to try coming out of that ravine.

You thought about the webbing anchored to the walls of the ravine. “Seems more likely she’d bring the ravine down on her than she’d come up.”

“Which would probably cause structural damage to the hives,” Feferi said. “I’ve called for a transport.”

“Sounds like you’ve got every little thing planned out,” you say. “We taking her to my hive, or are you taking over?”

“She’s still your project,” Feferi said. “Don’t mind my bossiness,” she said, and grinned. 

“That’s kinda your thing though, right?” You say, teasing her. “Anything you want me to do, your highness?”

She laughed then winced, because it pulled on her lip. “You keep an eye on Serket while I pack her an overnight bag.” She signed off with whoever she’d been messaging and closed her shellpad. She headed off to Serket’s respite block.   

That leaves you alone with Serket who is twitchy in her sleep despite the sopor gel packs in the medical sleeping pad. You can feel her being scared of her mom (and at the same time, desperately wanting to take care of her mom). There’s also a sort of subliminal buzz that might be spidermom and might be Vriska having a nightmare about her mom. Spider girl’s a mess, tangled hair in her face and her brows all pinched with whatever’s troubling her.

Whatever black feelings you’d been having are fading into something a little more pale. You think it would be pretty hard to have a lusus like Vriska’s. (A part of you thinks, “at least she’s got one.”) A mom like Serket’s might make anyone into a senseless little bitch. For this little girl not _meaning_ to do something was the same as not having done it. You could never blame her for anything because she’d just slip out of it with a “not my fault.” (Neither of you are good at being _responsible_ , maybe. Neither of you really have to be. Everyone else is responsible for staying out of your way. Your thoughts have a downward trajectory, your head is pounding and you want to sleep.)

Feferi comes back down with the bags about the time the transport arrives. Vriska starts waking up at the same time and the buzz you’d been sensing gets louder. She reaches for you with her spiderhoodoo but smacks into an entirely metaphorical wall. You chucklevoodoo her into a shivering little ball and Feferi is able to give her some more sedatives.

Vriska protests, whines and is generally a pitiful mess. “It’s going to be okay Serket, we’re just moving you to Gamzee’s until we figure out what to do about your spidermom,” Feferi says reassuringly. Vriska does not care. 

“I need to feed her! Let me go, gotta hunt--” Vriska says. She flails around a little, but it doesn’t do her much good. Feferi’s a lot stronger and it seems that she’s had some experience restraining kids her own age. It also turns out the kind of medical pad Feferi got is the kind that can be turned into a restraint cocoon. You get to carry the Vriska-roll out to the transport. The drone driving the thing does not even blink. You figure he’s probably been on weirder runs than this. Vriska flails and whines some more, until the sedative finally takes hold, then she’s still mumbling and bitching in her sleep. It is kind of stupidly cute.

The ride back to your hive is pretty quiet. Feferi is thinking really hard about something and doing some more conversing over her shellpad. You ask what she’s up too, but it’s pretty clear she doesn’t want the drone to overhear whatever it is. Feferi waits until you’re inside, with Vriska in one of your spare rooms before she says anything.

“So,” she says. “How’s your head?”

That throws you a little. Somehow, you thought she’d ask why you’re in cahoots with the psychopomp chica. “It’s okay,” you say. “Just took a little less than my usual amount of pie.” You hope she don’t ask what your usual dosage is, because you mostly don’t know. Also, you’re lying about your head being okay, and you’re pretty sure the sea-princess can see right through you.

“Do you think you might need some pie now?” she asks.

“I think I can go a little longer,” you say, and sit down on your couch.

Feferi sits catty-corner to you. “From Vriska, I got a very confused story about Tavros and Terezi being dead,” she says.

There’s no censure in her tone, but you kind of wince. “It was something me and Megido came up with,” you admit. “Thought if she’d feel sorry at all for what she did, it’d be because they’re dead.”

She nods. “You shoal probably tell her that they’re alive,” she says.

“Thought this was my project,” you say.

“That was a suggestion, not an order,” she says. “But you’re going to need Tavros help if weir going to do anything at all a boat Vriska’s mom.”

“He shouldn’t have to have anything to do with Vriska,” you say.

Feferi grins like a manic little nixie. “Do you have a crush on Nitram?” she asks, sounding completely delighted by this.   

You shrug. “Maybe. I just like him.”

“Anyway, he wouldn’t have to come here or even talk to her--and his powers are the best bet for keeping Vris’ spidermom in the ravine,” Feferi says. “I asked Aradia to suggest it to Nitram, if he’s feeling up to it.”

“Why didn’t you ask him your own self?” You ask. You’re pretty sure you know why though.

She gives you a look. “From me it’d be a command,” she says. “So I told Megido to make the suggestion to Nitram.”

“How do _you_ know she won’t take it as an order?” You ask.

“Megido won’t suggest anyfin to Nitram that she thinks might hurt him,” Feferi said. “They’re really good fronds.” She sounds pretty confident of that.

You talk for a while longer and she makes it clear that she will be staying around for a while to help with Vriska. You don’t object too much because you are tired again and you basically hurt all over. She makes you eat and then sends you off to your recuperacoon. You wake up maybe a few hours later with your husktop beeping at you about a message and the unpleasant sounds of Vriska pitching a fit. Without even thinking about it, you reach out and shut her up with chucklevoodoos. She fights back, but there’s not a lot she can do.

“Fefsis?” You call out.

“Vriska haddock to use the a-bluefin block and trout to make a break for it,” Feferi said. “Everything’s fin.”

“Fuck you and your stupid puns!” Vriska shrieked. This was followed by some thumping, a crash and some more screeching.

“I know my hive ain’t much, but I’d be chill with it not being all tore down,” You call out, and climb back out of your recuperacoon.

“It’s fin, Gamzee!” Feferi yells back. “I got everyfin under control!” And there’s another crash.

You head into the next room, not even bothering to cover up. The girls are in your meeting block. The source of the crash was some driftwood, some shells and a jar of sea glass you had up on your shelves. One of which is no longer intact. Feferi’s got Vriska pinned, and they are both staring at you wide eyed. More specifically, they are staring with fascinated horror at your groin.  

“Oh my cod--”

“Oh my god--”  

“Don’t tell me you never saw anyone naked before,” You say, a little offended.

They are still staring at your groin. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone with a-a _that_ ,” Feferi says in a tone of the most fascinated horror. “Where did you get it done? _How_ did you get it done?”  

“You’re five sweeps!” and it’s funny as hell that Vriska sounds so scandalized. Or envious, you can’t really tell. “How did you get a piercing at five sweeps? How’d you manage to not fuck it up?”

“Fef’s got her fins pierced,” You say. “Why wouldn’t I be able to get my--”

“Oh my god!” They shriek again. Suddenly in Serendipitous cahoots, the girls scramble up in a blur of limbs and abscond from your hive. You hear them continuing to invoke the deity all the way down the beach.

Grumbling to yourself, you rinse off in the ablution block and head back to your respite block to put on your clothes. The message alert is still blinking away.

**[apocalypseArisen (AA) is now trolling terminallyCapricious (TC)]**

 AA: i think i c0nfirm that the diary is as 0ld as it l00ks the actual c0ntents are an0ther st0ry and will require m0re cr0ss referencing

TC: WhAt dOeS ThAt mEaN, cHiCa? It’s nOt a rEaL DiArY?

AA: it’s a real diary pr0bably 0ne 0f a set the diarist th0ugh is kn0wn as being s0mething 0f a tr0ll munchausen

TC: ThAt sO?

AA: marquise spinneret mindfang teller 0f tall tales with herself as the pr0tag0nist gambligant dabbler in p0litics way 0ver her head and general th0rn in the imperiums side d0 y0u kn0w where vriska g0t it and if she has any 0ther diaries in the set

TC: I DoN’T KnOw. ThAt wAs tHe oNlY BoOk i fOuNd bUt tHaT DoN’T MeAn tHeRe mIgHt nOt bE OtHeRs eLsEwHeRe.

AA: i can find 0ut later i guess.

AA: h0w is she feferi said y0u were m0ving her

TC: ShE’S FiNe. FeFeRi’s mOsTlY KeEpInG An eYe oN HeR.

AA: tell peixes that i tried t0 call 0ff the gh0sts but i d0n’t kn0w h0w effective i was i can call them but i can’t guarantee they’ll listen

TC: aHaHaHaH YoU CaN OnLy tElL ThEm wHaT ThEy wAnT To dO AnYwAy?

AA: ^_^;

TC: :o)

TC: I NeEd tO Go cHeCk oN PeIxEs aNd sErKeT, aNd mAyBe gEt sOmEtHiNg tO EaT.

AA: 0kay

TC: ShOuLd tElL YoU I Am aLsO PrObAbLy gOiNg tO Be tElLiNg sErKeT AbOuT TaVrOs aNd tErEzI. jUsT A HeAdS Up.

AA: 0kay thanks f0r telling me

TC: :o)

**[apocalypseArisen (AA) is no longer trolling terminallyCapricious (TC)]**

 


	7. Vriska (Transformations that were too hard to find)

They were halfway down to the water when Feferi caught Vriska by her good arm and pulled her up short. They skidded to a stop in the sand. “Don’t get too close to the water,” Feferi warned. “Gamzee’s dad usually isn’t around, but it’s not really safe anyway because of his neighbors.”

Vriska pulled her arm free, remembering she was mad at Feferi. _You need to do something about your mom_ , Feferi had said. _You should have more influence over her and you don’t._ Like she knew anything at all about Vriska’s mom or how much influence she was supposed to have. (Vriska tried to ignore the little thread of fear that Feferi might decide to do something about it.) “Maybe he needs to do something about his lusus,” she parroted back Feferi.

“His lusus being unpredictable and territorial are the only things keeping his neighbors from killing him,” Feferi said. “Which you might not care about, but I do.”

“Why, are you pale for that pan-rotted sack of bulges?” Vriska asked. “I thought you were Eri-dan’s moirail.” She drew out the vowels in a long drawl.

Feferi’s fins flared angrily. “I don’t need to be pale for someone to care about them,” Feferi said with a clicking growl. “He’s my friend and I take care of my friends, which is obviously something you can’t be bothered to do, ‘Mindfang.’”

Vriska laughed. “Is that supposed to hurt my feelings, Peixes? Aradia is the one that culled them. Why don’t you go lecture her instead of me?”  

“Oh, is she the one who broke a boy’s back and left her sister for dead?” Peixes asked sarcastically. “I thought that was you!”

“She shouldn’t have gotten all mad at me because Tavros is a stupid cowardly wiggler!” Vriska shouted back.

“You trapped him in a no win situation,” Peixes shouted back. “What was he supposed to do?”

“Finish the scenario!” Vriska said. “When things happen in real life, you can’t just stop and say, well, this is too dangerous so stop now! He gives up too easily; I just wanted to make him stronger!” Tears stung her eyes, and she could barely talk around the hollow feeling in her chest. “She had no right to cull him! I fucking hate her!”

“What was a broken back supposed to teach him, Serket?” Peixes asked angrily.

“It was his own fault!”

“Yes, obviously, he decided to play with you!” Peixes shouted.  

“Why do you even care?” Vriska scrubbed at her eyes, angry and embarrassed. “He was just a dumb brown blood anyway.”

Peixes made a disgusted noise and her fins flared again. “I don’t know, _Mindfang_ , why were you so interested in him?” She asked.

 Something about how she said that made Vriska suspicious. Did she know who Tavros Ancestor was? Why would she care? “I asked first.”

Peixes smiled nastily. “And I don’t have to answer. And it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?”

Vriska wasn’t even a little intimidated by that smile, really. “Then I don’t have to answer either.”  Her voice didn’t shake at the end either, nope. There was a weird, creepy tone in Feferi’s voice just now, kind of like the way she’d told those creepy stories about the Empress, only a thousand times worse.  

“You wanted to make Nitram _stronger_. Like he didn’t meet up to your _expectations_ ,” Feferi said. “You must have been reely excited when you saw his name and symbol. It must have been like Serendipity itself tugging at your sleeve. Was it the same way with Redglare?”

She knew. How the hell did she know? Mister self-proclaimed military historian Eridan Ampora didn’t know about Mindfang. (At least, not the really cool stuff Vriska had found out.) Vriska had to tell him, and it had been nearly impossible to get him to play his part right. Probably because he was butt-hurt that Mindfang was a better Ancestor than Dualscar was. “Shut up,” Vriska said. “Just shut up!” Peixes took a sudden step forward and Vriska flinched.

“You wanted to play at being your Ancestor,” Feferi continued. She was still smiling that creepy, predatory smile. “But Nitram wasn’t playing right, never mind that lowbloods don’t believe in Ancestors and he wouldn’t have the clearance to know about his. You could get Terezi to play along, and maybe my sprat of a moirail to play along but you couldn’t get _Nitram_ to play, because he didn’t even know the rules.”   

Vriska wanted to run, just then, unnerved by Feferi’s accuracy, and the smile. (She tried to tell herself she was holding her ground.)  “Shut up! He’s dead anyway so it doesn’t even matter!”

“No, it doesn’t matter because he was just a brown blood, and you were just playing,” Peixes said.

“I wasn’t playing!” Vriska shouted back.  “He was supposed to be stronger! I was trying to fix him!” She lunged at Peixes then, but she dodged and Vriska overshot and belly-flopped on the sand. The fall jarred her arm again. Vriska screamed and hit the ground with her good hand, frustrated beyond belief at all of this hoofbeastshit.

“Maybe you should have tried being his friend instead,” Peixes said. “Do you need help up?”

“No. Go sit on a scorpion-ant hill.” Vriska slowly levered herself into a sitting position with her good arm. “I _was_ his friend,” she muttered. “You don’t know anything about me or my friends.”

“You’re absolutely current! Alewife I know is that you threw one of them off a cliff, and left the other one to fry,” Peixes trilled (fucking _trilled_ like some kind of squeaky seabeast) in an obnoxiously bright and cheerful tone.

“Oh fuck you sideways,” Vriska growled, glaring up at Peixes. “Also, your puns are shit.”

“Oh whale, they can’t alwaves be winners,” Peixes said cheerfully. She bent slightly, offering her hand. Vriska grabbed hold and attempted to pull Peixes down. This did not work at all, and grumbling, Vriska allowed Peixes to pull her up. “Let’s go back to Gamzee’s hive,” she said, and started up the beach, apparently assuming that Vriska would follow her and not try a sneak attack.

She was disgustingly correct. Vriska trudged after Peixes, thinking dark thoughts. She glared at Gamzee’s hive. It was only about as big as a mid-blood’s hive, maybe a bit larger, nothing at all like her own hive. She remembered the message he’d sent her. _Hey Serket, your hive is pretty motherfucking big. I bet about twenty kids could all be living here and never fucking even see each other for perigees._ “Why is his hive so small?” Vriska grumbled. “He’s an indigo!” She knew there were indigos who had big hives, why was Gamzee--who was pretty much the highest blood on land--living in such a dinky hive?

“He says he doesn’t need much space,” Peixes said. 

“And what is that thing on the tower? A tree? Why would he have a tree up there?”

“I guess because he wanted one?” Peixes said.

“It looks stupid,” Vriska grumbled.

Vriska could smell pancakes and grubs-and-eggs frying before they even reached the house. Once inside, Peixes immediately started cleaning up the mess from their fight. Peixes didn’t ask for help. (Not that Vriska would have cooperated.) She glared at Peixes and wandered into the food preparation block where Gamzee was cooking. “Psychopomp-sis says the diary’s real, and part of a set,” Gamzee said, turning to look at her over his shoulder before returning to his cooking.

“Of course it’s real,” Vriska huffed. She pretended she didn’t care about it being part of a set. “I’d know my own Ancestor’s writing. Why does Aradia have my diary anyway?”

“Well, you might be all sure your Ancestor wrote that book, but I’m not,” Gamzee said. “That sister has ways of knowing if something’s real history or not.”  

“Why would you want to know that?” Vriska asked.

Gamzee shrugged. “You’re set to be that troll, seems like knowing her would tell me about you.” He said it in a weird way, as if he didn’t approve of being like your Ancestor, which was completely stupid. (Well, if she were Zahhak she definitely wouldn’t want to be like _his_ Ancestor. Then she wondered if he knew about his Ancestor, and if he did, if that was why he was so weird.)

“And why’s that any of your business?” Vriska asked.

“I like that boy, and he didn’t need to be walked off no damn cliff. Maybe I want to know why you thought that was a thing to be doing,” Gamzee said and then, “dishes in the wash hub.” He pointed in the direction with his spatula and then he called out to Peixes that breakfast was ready.

Vriska thought about telling Gamzee where to go with his orders, but she was hungry, so she went to get dishes instead. She got out three of them, and eating utensils and set them on the nutrition plateau with a thump. She picked up one of the plates and headed over to the cooking hub. She snagged a couple of pancakes and plucked the food spade out of Gamzee’s hand to shovel some grubs-and-eggs onto her plate. Gamzee let her do it, looking placidly, infuriatingly amused.

Vriska thumped back to the table and sat down, just as Peixes appeared to get her own breakfast. “Someone has no mariners at all,” Peixes said cheerfully. “I’m surfed first, then Gamzee, and then you, since you’re so insistent on following caste protocol.”

The only possibly reply to this was to very deliberately shovel food into her mouth, chewing noisily. “Fuck. You,” Vriska said around a mouthful of eggs.

Peixes snickered and got herself a plate. “Aradia is supposed to have called off the ghosts,” she said, repeating what she’d said a little earlier, when Vriska had first woken up. “They may or may not listen to her! The new problem is Serket’s mom, who is due for a feeding.”

Vriska’s shoulders hunched defensively. “I haven’t had a chance to start a new campaign,” she said, glaring at Gamzee and Peixes. “Possibly because a baby subjuggulator and a seadweller decided it would be fun to kidnap me.”

“You also don’t have a partner,” Peixes pointed out. “Does your mom only eat trolls? Or is it just easier to control kids and walk them to your mom’s larder?”

The bluntness of Peixes questions somehow made something twist in Vriska’s gut. No one was really that straightforward about it. Terezi went along with the story that they were punishing evil doers, spider mom standing in for a Judicial Drone. Zahhak never said anything about it, just radiated disapproval because feeding your lusus was an “unrefined,” duty for a noble. Vriska had never really talked about it with Kanaya, and Eridan helped sometimes, for his own reasons. “It’s easier,” Vriska muttered. “I wouldn’t be able to feed her if I tried hunting. She needs a lot of food.”

“And you decided that since it’s your right to cull the unfit anyway, that you might as well also feed your mom,” Feferi said. She started in on the grubs-and-eggs.  

Even though the tone wasn’t accusatory, Vriska still felt cornered somehow. “What about your lusus?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you can do all the hunting for a shark the size of a small destroyer.”

“My dad can mostly feed himself. Any hunting I do is supplemental,” Peixes said. “And also involves culling the unfit! Your mom’s an ambush predator, and practically sessile because you drop dinner right into her mandibles.”

“She is not sessile,” Vriska said.  

“She’s totally sessile. She’s a _sponge_.” Peixes grinned nastily and snickered when Vriska hissed back.

“Fefsis, I thought you wanted to be the middle leaf,” Gamzee said, looking amused.

“Serket tried to feed me to her mom, I can call her mom a sponge if I want,” Peixes said blithely and had some more breakfast.

“It’s just that the place don’t need to be any more busted up than it is, sea-sis,” Gamzee said.

“Like I’d be ashen with either of you bulgeknots,” Vriska muttered.

“You’re too pitiful to really get a hate on with anyway,” Gamzee said.

Vriska stared up at Gamzee. She could not believe this waste of air was saying she was the pathetic one. “Your hive is a dinky pile of shit, you hair looks like it was dragged through a swamp, your claws are chewed up, you eat sopor, and you think I’m _pitiful_?”

Gamzee snorted. “Your hive is a _drafty_ pile of shit, your arm’s all busted up, and you pissed off your sister and crippled a boy you liked. Riddle me how _that’s_ not pathetic, chica.”   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have mentioned several times that in this AU Feferi's lusus is not a horrorterror.


	8. Tavros (imprisoned by the thoughts of what to do)

Gamzee liked him. That was the thought he kept circling around. Gamzee liked him well enough that he was willing to involve himself in a vengeance cycle because of him. (“This isn’t a vengeance cycle,” Aradia said. “This is to teach Vriska a lesson.”)  He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing yet. He was also kind of worried that Gamzee had been more than willing to completely disregard mental privacy in the same way Vriska had. Gamzee had apologized, but still.

Outside he could hear building drones modifying his hive. This was apparently being done by order of the Heiress, a sequence of words he never would have though applicable to his life until now, apparently. (“You don’t need to thank me!” she had written cheerfully over Trollian when he’d tried. “You’re the one kelping me!” When he questioned her about that comment, she’d written he was a “test subject,” and told him not to worry about it. This response was remarkably ineffective as far as reassurance went.) They were putting in ramps outside and later there were going to be further renovations on the interior to make it more “accessible.”

Tavros listened to the building some more, then pulled himself up onto the edge of the ramp and slid out of his recuperacoon. Tinkerbull, who had been sleeping on a shelf woke with a tiny snort and fluttered around Tavros’ head. After wiping off the sopor, he got into his four wheeled device and rolled into his meeting block, where Aradia was typing away at his computer. She looked up with a smile. “Evening, Tavros,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay I guess,” Tavros said. “Uh. Has anything else come up?” Tavros asked.

“The Heiress and Gamzee took Vriska to Gamzee’s hive,” Aradia said. “Vriska’s mom is getting hungry.”

“At the risk of stating the fairly obvious, that’s not good,” Tavros said. “What are they going to do?”

“Since Vriska tried to feed Peixes to her mom, strategically retreat to Gamzee’s,” Aradia said cheerfully.

For some reason, all Tavros could think to ask was, “is Vriska okay?”

“She’s still in one piece,” Aradia said. “Lucky her. We need to do something about her mom though.”

He was totally not going to echo “do something” like a tool. That was not a thing he was going to do. “Vriska will probably kill us if we kill her lusus,” Tavros said instead. He probably also should have said something about “what do you mean ‘we,’ sister?” but he didn’t think of it in time.

“That’s an option of last resort,” Aradia said reassuringly. “What I was thinking we could do is find out if there’s anything else she’ll eat, and proceed from there.”

Research, of course, came first. Information about the base-species Vriska’s spidermom originated from, information about the ecosystem local to Vriska’s hive. Most of the mega-arachnoid species were ambush predators, and Vriska’s spidermom was no exception. They usually built web-lined blinds near watering holes or animal trails and pounced on their prey.  (Two mega-arachnoid species were more active and drove their prey toward pit or web traps. They also exhibited an unusually high level of cooperation. A third species was semi-aquatic and built fishing weirs.)  

* * *

The base species that Vriska’s mom came from preferred rainforests with mountainous terrain. Their preferred prey was various species that were distantly related to trolls. There was a notable lack of rainforest or trolloids in the area around Vriska’s hivering. Someone had deliberately left an animal in a habitat they weren’t really suited for, a habitat where they could easily get sick or starve to death if they weren’t a lusus with a wiggler to take care of them. (Not that Vriska would be able to do a good job; most of the animals of a size big enough to feed Vriska’s mom were too big and aggressive for one kid to drive into the ravine.)

“Do you think you could do it?” Aradia asked when he’d pointed this out.

Tavros thought about it for a moment. “I think so. If I wasn’t in a four wheeled device.”

Aradia grinned. “What if you were flying?”

“You’d be able to carry me that far?” Tavros asked. He tried not to look too excited about getting to fly, but was pretty sure he wasn’t very successful, judging by the way Aradia’s smile widened.

“Well, me and Sollux,” Aradia said. “We need to do a little exploration first anyway.”

Getting ready to go to Vriska’s hive was weirdly like planning for an overday campaign. Figuring out what they would need to take, packing the food and clothes they decided on into their sylladexes and so on. While they waited for Sollux, Aradia Troogled maps of the area around Vriska’s hive (which was not actually an easy thing to do. Vriska could afford to keep the exact location of her hive secret, and did) to get an idea of what the terrain was like. She seemed really excited at the idea of exploring Vriska’s hive, and spent a lot of time talking about the diary she’d found, and about Vriska’s Ancestor, which was apparently actually a thing, or at least something Vriska and Aradia both believed in.

Tavros was a little annoyed about that. “She wrecked my landsprite shrine,” Tavros said. “She said she didn’t but it was definitely her. She said fairies were stupid and not real anyway. Ancestors have as much subjective reality as fairies.”

“Vriska doesn’t believe in anything, except maybe her Ancestor,” Aradia said. “Things would be a lot easier if she did.”

* * *

It took several hours to fly to Vriska’s hive, it was almost dawn before they reached it. Passing over the ravine gave Tavros a chill. He could sense the huge spider’s hunger and frustration at being trapped in her nest. There wasn’t a lot of worry in the lusus’ thinkpan for Vriska. It was all jagged bits of hungry and a repeated image of a silhouette shoving  a kid over a cliff. D _aughterfeedmehungryfeedmefeedme daughter,_ the spider was thinking relentlessly

 “She’s hungry,” Tavros said needlessly. “Sorry. It’s just really overwhelming.”

“It’s okay Tavros,” Aradia said reassuringly. “You probably don’t want to know what I’m hearing right now.”

“No, that really was a pretty inane thing to say.” Sollux said. “It was definitely a Troll Deana Troi thing to say. Apology accepted.”

Aradia immediately jumped to Tavros’ defense and the bickering went on for several minutes after they landed and entered the hive. Tavros thought it was kind of cute, like a sitcom moirallegiance. He let himself be distracted by the bickering to take his mind off the creepy feeling of entering someone else’s hive without permission. A creepy feeling made worse by the flickering shadows of the dead.

They set up camp in one of the meeting blocks and then Sollux and Aradia absconded for the food preparation block. Psionics burned up a lot of calories! They came back with pop-and-serve dinners and fruit juice in foil packages. “You have your choice of wingbeast cacciatore, spaghetti and grub balls and stuffed peppers!” Aradia said as she set the covered trays down.

“Wingbeast cacciatore,” Tavros said, and caught the tray Aradia tossed his way. He popped the lid and it went from room temperature to piping hot in under thirty seconds. “Wow. That was a lot faster than I expected.” He picked up the plastic spork that went with the tray and poked experimentally at the chunks of wingbeast before taking a bite. It didn’t taste _too_ much different than the lowblood version.

“Serket can definitely afford the good stuff,” Sollux said and popped the lid on his own meal.

They spend most of the early morning planning what they were going to do next, and then went to sleep.

And that’s when everything went apeshit batfuck bananas.

_How dare you HOW DARE YOU he’s alive she’s ALIVE and you LIED TO ME YOU LIED I HATE YOU I HATE YOU HATE YOU SO MUCH!_

\--blazed through his thinkpan, a shriek of rage stabbing him relentlessly between the eyes.

Tavros had a brief impression of a girl crouched (on the ground) glaring up at (an indigo shadow), and then there was more pain. Tavros curled up on the sopor gel pad as nausea twisted his guts into knots. Someone grabbed his shoulder and he lashed out, snarling with rage-terror-rage. Everything was a red blur and he was vaguely aware of Aradia in the background, asking him if he was all right. (He so wasn’t) “Vriska,” Tavros said. “She knows we’re alive,” he swallowed hard. “She’s not happy about being lied to.”

Pain swamped him again and he curled up in a ball and tried not to throw up. He could feel Vriska going through his head, could feel Gamzee tearing into Vriska with terror. He wanted to tell them both to stop, to just stop it, but they couldn’t hear him over their rage. Vriska was trying to get him to do something, something having to do with her mom but Gamzee tore up every thread.

Vriska reached for Sollux, he could sense that was a thing she wanted, a fractured image of Sollux blowing up the hive but Gamzee yanked her back before she could get a foothold, wrapped her up in a nightmare of her spider mom wrapping her in silk that Tavros could only taste the edges of. (Distantly, he could hear Sollux cursing, terrified and angry at the invasion.)

_And just WHAT are you going to do about it? Finish the MOTHERFUCKING JOB maybe? How DARE I? You have the BRASS to be ASKING HOW I DARE DO ANYTHING?_

_Stop it, just stop it,_ Tavros wanted to say. _Stop using my thinkpan as an arena. Get out of my head._ Only they couldn’t hear him, and maybe wouldn’t have cared if they had. He was distantly aware of Aradia with her arms around Sollux, who was still freaking out and for a moment desperately wished he had someone like Aradia to keep _him_ from freaking out.

There was just him though. No one else.

Just him, a head full of burning and the terrifying hunger of Vriska’s spidermom gnawing away at the back of his mind.

And a tiny voice telling him he could stop this cold, if he really wanted to.

And he really, really did.

So he reached out, further than he ever had before, and much, much deeper, not for Vriska’s mom, but for Gamzee’s dad. He was lucky; Gamzee’s Seagoatdad was lurking just off shore, and aware that something was happening, but not quite ready to defend his grub’s territory. Tavros settled into seagoatdad’s thinkpan.

Seagoatdad’s brain was full of hunger, random impulses and rage. Seagoat males had wide ranges that overlapped the territories of several females, and were generally extremely antisocial. Most of their energy was spent in defending their territory, mating with receptive females and hunting. Seagoatdad was good at defending territory, maybe a little too good. There weren’t any female territories near his own, so he had to go far afield in order to mate. Most of his time was spent going back and forth, but his aggressiveness when he did finally return made up for it.

(Except not, the part that was mostly Tavros thought. Except for the part where Gamzee spent most of his time alone on the shore hoping just to catch sight of his dad.)

Tavros urged Seagoatdad up out of the water and straight up the beach toward Vriska and Gamzee. Off to one side was the Heiress, attempting to get their attention with her 2x3dent. (It was totally ineffective!) They were frozen in the middle of their fight for dominance, coercive telepathy versus projective empathy and full of primal rage. Seagoatdad, seeing the fight immediately stormed up the beach, braying a furious challenge. Vriska had just enough time to see them coming before she was knocked away from Gamzee by the enraged seagoat.

Tavros wanted to do more, wanted to somehow tell them to stop fighting, but he slipped free of Seagoatdad’s thinkpan and into a dark well.  

* * *

Tavros was vaguely aware that he was not alone in the place where he was lying down. He was in a meeting block, lying on a seating plateau that had a sopor bedroll laid out on it. The block had shelves full of sea shells and bits of driftwood and jars full of dead things. Two of the shelves looked as if they’d been hastily and crudely repaired. He turned his head as much as he was able to given his horns and his position and saw Vriska curled up in a nearby recliner. She was viciously thumb-typing on a tyrian-colored shellpad.

She looked up when he moved and for some reason almost dropped the shellpad. She fumbled with it and set it down with an angry little click on a nearby table, and glared at him as if it were his fault. “Okay, good, you’re finally awake,” she said. “You want some water?”

Well that was a friendly offer, and not in the least suspicious or weird. Tavros nodded cautiously, and Vriska got up and bounced out of the room. She returned a few minutes later with the glass of water and the Heiress bringing up the rear.

“Let me help you sit up, Tavros,” The Heiress said cheerfully, and lifted him into a sitting position. “Gamzee’s with his dad out on the beach.”

“Okay,” Tavros said, and took the cup of water Vriska was still holding. He sipped water and tried to think of something to say that was at least halfway intelligent instead of lame and confused. “Um, how long was I asleep?”

“Three nights!” the Heiress said. “You overexerted yourself and we had to have you brought to Gamzee’s hive.”

“What about Aradia and Sollux?”

“They went home after they dropped an auroch with four broken legs into Spidermom’s larder,” the Heiress said cheerfully. “She was hungry enough to eat it without complaining too much!”

“That’s good,” Tavros said. “Um. What happened?” he asked.

“When you sicced Gamzee’s dad on them?” the Heiress asked with a grin. “Vriska fainted in terror--”

“--Oh fuck you Peixes,” Vriska muttered.

“--And Gamzee kept his dad from eating us, and then we carried Vriska up to the hive. Aradia told us what happened to you during the psychic battle, and I told her to bring you here.”

 “Okay.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. His head was too full of questions and he had no idea of what to ask or think.  

“I’m going to go let Gamzee know you’re awake,” the Heiress said, and absconded from the room, leaving him and Vriska alone.

They were awkwardly quiet for several minutes before Vriska said something. “Your Ancestor and my Ancestor were matesprits,” she said finally. “It was dumb and I was being dumb and I thought I could make you more like him because it kind of worked on Eridan though he was just playing around.”

Tavros blinked. “I have no idea of what to say about that,” he said. Except that it was dumb, but he wasn’t going to say that to Vriska. “I didn’t know that Ancestors was actually a thing.”

Vriska looked scandalized, which was actually kind of funny. “They totally are!” Vriska said. “Your Ancestor was the Summoner, the leader of the infamous rebellion that exiled adults off world! And my ancestor was a famous Gambligant! They had a tragically beautiful romance that was completely epic!”

“That ended when she threw him off a cliff?” Tavros asked. Part of him was horrified he was mouthing off like this, but the other half was kind of enjoying needling her.

“No! He killed her because--” Vriska’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t taking this seriously are you?”

“Not really, no, because Ancestors,” Tavros said. “If that’s something you want to believe in that’s okay, but genetically similar people who have a special connection to you doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“And fairies do?!” Vriska shouted incredulously.

“All matter has an etheric presence,” Tavros said. “Some matter leaves a more definite presence than others. That presence cab continue long after the actual matter is gone. If trolls leave ghosts behind, then so can a sentient non-troll or a tree, or an animal or a rock.”

“There is no scientific basis for that!” Vriska said. “I have real actual proof that my ancestor existed!”

“Wasn’t there all some kids that went and provided proof about fairies though?” Gamzee asked as he sloped into the block.

“That was trick photography!” Vriska said. “Stupid cardboard fake photography!”

“And what’s that diary of yours, Serket?” Gamzee said, sounding amused. He settled into a chair. “I’m glad you’re all getting along.”

“Whatever,” Vriska muttered. “I apologized and I want to go home and feed my mom.”

“You’ll have to take that up with Peixes. She’s the one with drones playing chauffer and all.”

Vriska flipped the chirpbeast at Gamzee with both barrels and loudly stomped off, calling out to Peixes.

“She really apologize, bro?” Gamzee asked once she was out of earshot.

“Um, not really, but I guess if she thinks it’s an apology, I’m okay with that?”

Gamzee snorted. “You really okay with that?”

Tavros shrugged, not wanting to answer.

“Maybe I should apologize too,” Gamzee said. “I wasn’t all intending this mess, don’t think spooky sis was intending either. She shouldn’t have gone and fucked you over, but I shouldn’t have fucked with you to get to her, so I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s, that’s really okay,” Tavros said, not quite able to look Gamzee in the face. “But you and Aradia should have asked me what I wanted to do, and, and maybe backed off if I told you to.”

“Sorry bro, but maybe not too sorry, because all what we did brought you here for visit,” Gamzee said. “And that is a thing I am glad to experentiate. When you’re feeling a little more up to it, want to slam?”

 Tavros smiled. They probably actually needed to talk, but he thought maybe that could wait. "Sure."


End file.
